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Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Interview with Steve Bein, author of "Daughter of the Sword"

I met Steve Bein online on a writer's site, and you may recall that he did a post here for Tolkien Week about using inanimate objects as characters in a novel. Steve's first novel just released today, and anyone who has been around here for a while will recognize plenty of things we like around here: Japan, fantasy, swords, and great writing. Steve and I did an interview, and I think you'll find what he has to share interesting. In the meantime, here's Steve's website, and here's a link to his book on Amazon.

1. Tell us about Daughter of
the Sword. What's the book about?

Mariko Oshiro, the only
woman to make sergeant and detective in Tokyo’s most elite police unit, has a misogynistic
boss who wants to make sure she’ll never realize her dream of joining the Narcotics
unit. She’s got a good lead on a cocaine
ring but instead he gives her the least promising case he’s got: the attempted
theft of an ancient sword. Things get a
lot weirder when she learns the man who owns the sword says it’s magical, and a
lot more dangerous when the would-be thief turns out to be a yakuza enforcer
attempting to carve out a new criminal empire.
The book alternates between Mariko’s story and historical interludes
that follow the exploits of the three swords as they find their way in the
hands of different warriors throughout Japanese history, from the samurai era
up to WWII.

2. Okay, so this novel has a
cop, some samurai, cursed swords, and Tokyo gangsters. How would you describe
it? Is this urban fantasy? Police procedural? Mystery? Thriller?

All of the above, actually.

The question, “What genre is
this?” has a lot packed into it, doesn’t it?
It assumes there’s one
answer. Mariko’s storyline, the one set
in the modern day, is a police procedural and thriller with a touch of urban
fantasy. But the forays into Japan’s
past are clearly historical fiction, with a touch of historical fantasy.

3. I love Japan but I've
never been there. Have you been there before? What draws you to that setting?

It’s a little embarrassing,
but it probably started with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I discovered them in fourth or fifth grade,
when they still only existed in black-and-white comic form. From there I graduated to chop-socky movies,
then my own martial arts career, then my Eastern Philosophy course in college,
and ultimately went to Nagoya and Tokyo to study Japanese philosophy. So yeah, Japan’s pretty much in my blood at
this point.

As for what draws me to it,
one of the things I really appreciate about Japanese culture is its aesthetic
sensibilities. There’s a certain beauty
in stillness, in potential energy held in check. Michael Mann and not Michael Bay, if that
makes sense. I like a patient story that
can unfold at its own pace, like Mann did with Heat, and like you’ll see in any Kurosawa film.

And there’s a certain beauty
in impermanence and fragility that I don’t think we always appreciate in this
country. The quintessential example is
the samurai who dies at his prime, and (oddly enough) the cherry blossom. Even a gentle breeze can blow it apart, and
there’s only about a week when they’re in bloom. Japanese people take days off of work to have
picnics under the cherry trees and watch the blossoms fall like snowflakes. I suppose we do something similar when we go
on road trips to see the fall colors, but not many people take the time to do
that here.

4. How did you go about
researching a novel set in Tokyo? What sort of research did you have to do for
this novel?

It certainly helps to have
lived there. These days you can get a
lot from Google, but getting a feel
for the city is important, especially if it’s a culture radically different
from the one you grew up in. (I often
think about how convenient it would be if I’d just write about someplace cheap
and easy to get to, but no, I just had
to set my stories halfway around the world.)

As for specific research, I
read a lot of books on the samurai and their era, and a little on WWII, and as
much as I could get on the yakuza (which isn’t much), and I was very lucky to
find a good scholar who studies police work in Japan. I interviewed a lot of cops too, particularly
female cops, to understand the job and to get a feel for what it’s like to be a
woman in that profession.

But the most fun was the
sword research. That allowed me to go
back to training in kendō and iaidō—Japanese sword arts. I just love that stuff.

5. Are there more books
coming in the series? What are you working on now?

I just turned in a revised
manuscript forthe second novel
yesterday. Right now I’m plotting book
three.

6. And there’s a companion
novella too, right? What is Only A Shadow about, and how is it
connected to Daughter of the Sword?

Only A Shadow was originally a part of Daughter
of the Sword, but my editor and I felt that it didn’t drive the story
forward, and in truth it stands very well on its own. It’s too short to be a novel in its own right
and too long for most magazines that publish short fiction, so we decided to
publish it as a novella for e-readers. It’s
a heist caper, but with ninjas instead of Robert DeNiro or Steve McQueen. An aging ninja master has to steal a
masterwork sword in order to save his clan from extinction, but he can’t manage
it on his own. He needs to recruit
someone faster, younger, and stronger to help him, though he knows the new recruit
may well seek to betray him and take his place.

7. Daughter of the Sword just released today, and it looks fantastic.
I'm going to start reading it tonight. Tell me that it's fantastic. Is it
everything I am hoping it will be?

I think you’re going to like
it a lot. I’ve been really pleased to
see the nice attention it’s been getting from the critics, and I think the book
has a little something for everyone. If
you like police thrillers, Mariko’s storyline has a lot for you. If you like historical fiction, you’ll find plenty
of that here, on a culture that you don’t often get to see in historical
fiction. And of course if you like a
little twist of fantasy in your fiction, then this book is just perfect for
you.

8. I saw you described this
book as a “thoughtful thriller.” What do
you mean by that?

I don’t buy the idea that
genre fiction has to be “summer reading,” as in, “turn off your brain and
enjoy.” My characters wrestle with
philosophical conflicts as well as physical ones. At the end of the day this is a book about
duty, and about how we define ourselves based on what we perceive our moral
duties to be. It’s about duty in the
same way that Batman Begins is a film
about fear and The Dark Knight is a
film about whether human nature is intrinsically good or intrinsically evil. Those are thoughtful thrillers too. Very sophisticated scripts, plus some
ass-kicking action sequences. It seems
to me the two go together just fine.

9. If you could own one of
the swords from your novel, which one would it be and why (assuming you can do
this without spoilers)?

Beautiful Singer is the most
elegant, but she’s dangerous, so not her.
Glorious Victory’s curse is a mixed blessing, but it’s the most
impressive of the swords in terms of sheer size. Tiger on the Mountain is really good for
property values, for reasons I can’t disclose without spoilers. In the end I think I’d have to go with
Glorious Victory for the sheer coolness factor.
That sword would take up most of a wall no matter what wall I hung it
on.